Cameron Invokes Thatcher
with Cheap Propaganda Stunt
By Finian Cunningham
March 24, 2015 "ICH"
- "SCF"
- If Britain’s prime minister David Cameron
wants to invoke memories of the late
Margaret Thatcher – then good luck to him.
With only weeks to go to the
British national election and the
re-election of a Conservative-led government
in doubt after five years of brutal economic
austerity, Cameron made the bizarre
announcement last week that Britain is going
to fund «free market reforms» and «good
governance» in eastern European countries.
The move invited comparisons with Cold War
era British premier Margaret Thatcher who at
the end of the 1980s launched a similar
programme to assist former Soviet Bloc
countries adopt «free market reforms».
The late Margaret Thatcher
may have reigned a quarter of a century ago,
but she is still widely despised by large
sections of the British electorate owing to
her ruthless promotion of rightwing
pro-business policies that gutted public
services and accelerated the gap between
rich and poor – a legacy that Britain is
still grappling with. Thrice-elected
Thatcher never won an election with an
outright majority in Britain. Her
«successes» can thus be ascribed more to a
weakness in Britain’s opposition Labour
party, which failed to galvanise popular
protests with a convincing alternative to
«Thatcherism». Indeed, the Labour party
ended up capitulating to Thatcher’s
neoliberalism under Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown, and it still does under the current
leader Ed Miliband.
So, Cameron’s latest wheeze
on «democracy promotion» in eastern Europe
in the shadow of his predecessor is in
danger of reminding British voters of his
party’s anti-democratic legacy at home, by
the mere mention of Thatcher’s name. That
reminder could likely backlash on Cameron by
turning off even more voters in the
forthcoming May 7 elections.
And if Cameron is trying to
resuscitate a national pride in «Great
Britain» as an international player, then
that gambit does not carry much credibility
either. Cameron’s so-called Good Governance
Fund is being targeted at Ukraine, Moldova,
Georgia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Serbia. The
funds involved are a modest £20 million
($30m). British officials claim that the
project is to help the transition to
democracy, or as the Conservative-supporting
Daily Telegraph puts it: «to help former
communist states come in from the cold and
resist the Putin regime».
Spread over five or six
states, £20 million is peanuts if we are to
accept the official British purpose of
promoting economic and political reforms in
banking, energy and policing, and «rooting
out cronyism».
Nevertheless, the symbolism
of Cameron’s government finding new money to
throw at foreign countries while his own
population is suffering from record levels
of poverty and food insecurity will also
smack of absurd priorities. It is reckoned
that some 13 million Britons out of a total
64 million population are languishing in
chronic poverty. That poverty is a result of
Cameron pursuing Thatcherite neoliberal
policies that indulge City of London
financiers and a rich minority at the
expense of the wider public.
The more telling aspect of
British funds to eastern Europe is that it
is overtly political and aimed explicitly
with an anti-Russian agenda. Never mind
about alleged «economic reforms», the real
purpose was admitted by Cameron as
«countering Russian intimidation».
It is a sign of how much
diplomatic relations have deteriorated when
Cameron and his officials explicitly cite
Russian aggression, intimidation and
propaganda as the basis for the British
Treasury mustering £20 million for overseas
«aid». Thatcher was an arch Cold Warrior who
rode shotgun with American President Ronald
Reagan in his denunciation of the «evil
Soviet empire». However, at least the Iron
Lady retained fairly cordial relations with
then Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and
her funding of reforms in former Soviet
countries was constrained in its rhetoric as
promoting «free markets» – not in terms of
attacking Russian leaders or Moscow, as the
Cameron government is wont to do.
«UK expertise can play a
crucial role in bringing about the reforms
needed to build lasting stability in the
region, especially in the face of Russian
intimidation, and it is right that we step
up our efforts alongside international
partners,» was how Cameron’s explained his
latest initiative.
The Daily Telegraph quoted
London officials further: «When they
[eastern European countries] are facing some
intimidation from Russia, we should be
standing alongside them with concrete help.»
This is in keeping with the
British government’s assessment last week
that attributes Russia as a new global
threat to Britain. The continual accusations
of Russian aggression made by Britain and
the highly personalised attacks on Vladimir
Putin are baseless and wildly inflammatory.
Even at the height of the Cold War, it is
hard to imagine such a torrent of invective
being directed at Moscow.
Another telling aspect of
Cameron’s «pro-democracy» funds in eastern
Europe is that they are directed at «civic
society» and «promoting accurate news
media». This gets to the nub of what
Cameron’s «good governance funds» are all
about. A fund of £20 million is hardly
likely to make much impression on
institutional reforms, as primarily claimed
by London. But the money could go a long way
in propping up «think tanks», journalists
and bloggers who are, in return, expected to
influence public discourse and in particular
promote a political agenda in target
countries favouring Western interests.
It is significant that £5
million of the British funding has already
been disbursed to Ukraine under the control
of the Western-backed Kiev regime. It is
also significant that Cameron’s list of
beneficiary countries is the same list cited
earlier this year by US Secretary of John
Kerry. Kerry told Congress that he wants
over $630 million to «counter Russian
propaganda» in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and
the Balkan states. The top US diplomat
railed against Russian media outlets such as
RT for «distorting» political events.
Evidently, Washington and
London are concerned that their anti-Russian
propaganda, masquerading as Western news, is
not having quite the impact on public
opinion that is intended. Alternative, real
news out of Ukraine and on the
Anglo-American belligerence towards Russia
in eastern Europe is having a corrective,
countervailing influence. That corrective is
debilitating Washington and London’s policy
of incitement against Moscow and demonising
Vladimir Putin in particular.
David Cameron’s wheeze of
«promoting democracy» with an underwhelming
£20 million fund has all the hallmarks of
what it is: a has-been Western power trying
its best to destabilise foreign countries on
the cheap. It’s a cheap stunt that will
likely backfire on Cameron as he faces the
beleaguered British electorate on May 7.
© Strategic Culture
Foundation